Daily updates about Syria

11/16/2014

This is all I had time for today

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that it has documented 1,153 deaths in the fighting around Kobani since the Islamic State launched its offensive on September 16th. They acknowledge that due to the secrecy that the IS has around its casualties, the actual numbers are likely much higher.

27 of the dead are Kurdish civilians, 17 of whom, including 2 teenagers, were executed by the IS.

387 of the dead are fighters from the YPG and al-Asayesh.

712 of the dead are from the IS, including 23 suicide bombers.

16 of the dead are from other rebel groups fighting with the YPG.

The Islamic State executed 13 people who were arrested a month ago in al-Tabaqa in al-Raqqa on charges of belonging to NDF sleeper cells.

The Islamic State released a video showing the execution of 18 captured SAA soldiers and Peter Kassig, an American aid worker. The video says that the executions took place in Dabiq in Aleppo:

Although the former journalists and aid workers executed in these videos have been made to say pro-IS statements, Kassig apparently refused to do so.

Kassig is a former US Army Ranger who travelled to Lebanon in 2012 to help treat Palestinian and Syrian refugees. He then founded Special Emergency Response and Assistance, moving to southern Turkey near the Syrian border, where he delivered aid to refugees, help treat wounded people, and trained medics in Syria. He was kidnapped by the IS at a checkpoint in October 2013 after he began working in Deir Ez Zor.

The IS fighters who beheaded the SAA soldiers were all from different nationalities.